


The Wonderful Life of Caleb Widogast

by Mikkeneko



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Everybody Hugs Ending, Gen, Merry Christmas!, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, Temporary Character Death, dark timeline, enslavement
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-27 08:16:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17158487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mikkeneko/pseuds/Mikkeneko
Summary: On the coldest night of the year, a man stands at the precipice of the end of his life. But his death may have far-reaching consequences that he never anticipated.





	The Wonderful Life of Caleb Widogast

**Author's Note:**

> Art for this fic is by [@yetti](https://twitter.com/drawsshits), please do not use for any other purpose.
> 
> Not to be confused with The Gay and Wonderful Life of Caleb Widogast, which is something else entirely; this is an It's A Wonderful Life AU.
> 
> The dagger that appears in this story was an item from @capriceandwhimsy's D&D campaign called Soulburner. Soulburner was a legendary weapon that would kill you, destroy your body, devour your soul, and erase any possibility of ever being resurrected. That item was itself an adaptation of one of the Ciphers from donjon.bin.sh's list of magical items. Really, it ought to be a one-charge use sort of thing and *far* too valuable to waste on one depressed wizard, but it's serving plot purposes here.
> 
> *looks at the raft of warnings* For a Christmas fic, this sure did get dark!

**THE WONDERFUL LIFE OF CALEB WIDOGAST**

****

 

Caleb sits in the dark of the second shift watch, alone. He isn't supposed to be; Jester was supposed to be keeping watch with him. She's sleeping now, curled up sweetly on her side using her sketchbook as a pillow.

He'd put her there. Scattered the sand and spoken the words with a bare murmur as she rattled confidently on, and within a few seconds she'd been overcome by yawns and slid down into sleep. He'd tucked one of the blankets around her so she wouldn't get too cold.

It's a cold night. The ground is hard with frost and a few stray snowflakes spin down from the sky every now and then. The woods around him are silent, beasts and birds gone into hiding for the winter, the rest of his friends sleeping closer to the warmth of the campfire.

Caleb sits in the dark alone, and considers the knife balanced across his lap. It's innocuous enough, a short blade curved on one side to a wicked point. Runes are engraved on each side but there is no shine to the metal, no glint of light reflected; it's a dull matte black that seems to swallow all light that falls on it.

The Mighty Nein took it as loot from the bowels of the cave system where they'd flushed out the last of the cultists. The high priest had wielded it against Beau in the final struggle, but he'd never been able to land a hit against her nimbleness and speed. How fortunate for her, and for them all, that he hadn't managed so much as a nick.

Afterwards, while the others searched the bodies and Jester drew cheerfully obscene doodles over the dark runes incised on the walls, he'd picked it up off the altar and Identified it just as he always did for magical items the Nein picked up on their travels. He'd told them it was a Ritual Seax, an item imbued with a friendly enchantment that helped guide magical spells to hit their targets more often. Nobody had questioned him when he'd kept it for himself.

He'd lied.

When the truth about the dagger had come to him through the spell he'd nearly dropped it in shock.  _ The Cipher of Annihilation. _ He'd heard of the spell but he'd never imagined he would actually see it -- especially not that he would see it bound to a weapon instead of written on a scroll locked carefully away in the vaults of someone like the Cobalt Soul.

This knife, thrust into the heart of an unwilling victim, will not only kill them -- it will erase all trace of their existence from the universe, past and present, as though they had never existed at all. It's powerful, deadly magic, magic strong enough to bend the laws of reality around it. It is exactly the sort of magic he's been searching for in all his research, all his travels.

And now it has been dropped into his hands.

The answer he's looking for. The miracle he didn’t think he'd ever find. The answer to all his prayers, his wishes, all bound up in this blade.

All it will take is one thrust. One little thrust, and everything will be fixed. His parents, alive again. All his sins, expunged. All his mistakes, undone.

Himself, undone.

It isn't even a question. He'd wanted what this artifact offered too badly, too long, to even doubt whether it's the right thing to do. Of course it's the right thing to do, of  _ course _  it is, there is no reason to even hesitate…

But he does hesitate, all the same, because he is a fucking  _ coward. _

Will it hurt, dying? Will it hurt, being erased from existence? If he does this there will be no turning back, no last-minute second thoughts. But that also means that there will be no more of this crushing guilt, no more episodes that leave him helpless and useless and a burden on everyone around him, no more pain.

Unless. Is there a Hell waiting for him? He's certainly earned one. But if he understands the enchantment correctly, his soul will be utterly obliterated at the same time as his body, and there will be nothing left to go on to Hell. So this really is the best thing for everyone, then. Even for himself.

He tries to make it easier for himself. Flips the knife around in his lap, sets the point upwards just under his ribcage.

One thrust. All his sins delivered.  _ Come on, Widogast, you craven cur, _  he thinks to himself, the little voice in the back of his mind that always sounds just a little bit like Trent.  _ You've failed everything else you've ever done in your miserable life. Don't you dare fail this now. _

He's cold, and he's alone, and it would be so easy. As soon as his hands stop shaking he'll do it. He will.

Movement stirs in the corner of his eye, resolves itself into the shape of Nott, wrapped in her cloak against the cold. She comes and sits by him, her yellow eyes shining in the depths of her hood, her mask a blur of white across her face. "Caleb," she says softly, her familiar alto voice reaching through his haze of self-loathing. "Caleb, what are you doing?"

He's crying. He is so pathetic. He reaches up with his free hand and dashes the tears from his eyes, his other hand still clenched around the hilt of the knife. "Making the world a better place, mein schatz," he says in a choked voice.

Her eyes linger on the knife. He expected questions, vociferous protests -- but she seems to know just by looking what he means. "Without you?" she says plaintively. "I don't think that would be better at all."

"Don't you?" The tears overflow, and he presses the palm of his shaking hand against his eyes. "I've been nothing but a burden and a curse since I was a child. I've hurt so many, many people. You  already know that, schatzi." She knows all his secrets, knows the atrocities that he has committed, and yet she has never, ever given up on him. She loves him so much and he is so desperately unworthy of that love. "Everyone would be better off if I was never born."

"But I'd miss you," she says softly. "We'd all miss you."

He shakes his head sharply and little drops go flying. "You wouldn't," he says roughly. "You wouldn't have ever known me, so there'd be nothing to miss. You'd all be better off without me."

A moment's pause, like the world stopping a moment to take a breath. Then, "Do you really believe that?"

He closes his eyes. Nods. "I do," he says.

"Why don't we look and see?" Nott's voice sounds directly next to his ear, although he hadn't heard her move.

His eyes fly open. A howling wind blasts around him, scouring the frozen ground of its fallen leaves, the trees in the night around him bending, attenuating, then vanishing altogether. The world around him goes peculiarly still and grayscale, like a charcoal sketch, and none of his sleeping companions rouse or react to it at all.

He scrambles to his feet, fingers clutching into fists hard enough to go bloodless-white. It's no longer dark, but at the same time there is no source of light -- just a flat grayness that extends endlessly in every direction. "What's happening?" he demands, his voice shaking. "What is this?"

"A chance not many people get, Caleb Widogast," Nott answers from behind him; she alone in the grayscale landscape is unchanged, swathed in the darkness of her cloak with only her glowing yellow eyes to light it. "To see the fall before the jump. The consequences before the act. A chance to see what the world would be like without you."

Movement in the grayness around him, color and shape flickering into being behind him and lighting the space around him. The scene takes shape around him, dim and slightly blurred as though seen through dark glass, but unmistakable.

It's Blumenthal, the home town he remembers -- so  _ much _  as he remembers. Everything from the patched roof on the town chapel to the corner stand selling harvest produce is just as it had been on the last day he'd seen it, the day he had broken.

There is his house, still whole, untouched by flames -- and through the window, his parents.

A sound escapes his lips that he never meant to utter, and he balls his hands into fists hard enough for his nails to cut into his palm. His knees threaten to give out and he staggers a step forward until he can rest his shoulder against the frame of the window, staring through it in disbelief.

His mother and father, the last day he'd seen them alive -- they go about their business. Time seems to race forward, his parents moving at impossible speeds as they move around the little hut, sweeping the floor, cooking meals, washing their clothes.

There's no cot behind a curtain in the corner, no children's toys or careless clothes strewn about on the floor. His father comes in from the fields and leaves his boots by the door, takes the mule's harness by the fire to mend the stitching. Goes to bed. Sleeps. Alive.

"They lived?" he whispers, hardly daring to voice it.

"For a time," Nott says.

Again time seems to blur forward as Caleb watches play out before his eyes the future his parents had never gotten to have. He sees them age, wrinkles and grey hairs that he'd never gotten to see on them overtaking them. Smiles in the house, but never laughter. His mother stoops, his father limps. The life of a farmer is a hard one and they'd never been more than poor.

Years crawl by and the images of his parents slow further, grow frailer. His mother takes to her bed, face glowing with fever, and within days it kills her. His father lives for a time after that, moving about the little house like a ghost, never smiling, until finally he too succumbs to the cold Zemni winter.

The scene grinds to a stop in Blumenthal's graveyard out back the chapel, two headstones capping graves that rest side by side.

"They lived good lives," Caleb whispers, tears streaming freely down his face now. "They died peacefully, in their age, as they should. How can there be any other choice?"

Nott nods. "That's one," she says "Now let's see the rest."

The scene of Blumenthal flickers and goes out, returning the surroundings to greyness. The new location grows from the ground up like an invasive weed, spreading malicious tendrils across the blank stone wall of a building he remembered all too well.

He blanches even though the building and all its horrors are a decade or more behind him now. The Cerberus Assembly outpost outside Nogvurot, Trent Ikithon's private estate.

He moves forward in a trance, his feet carrying him through the spell-warded iron portcullis into the hallways, down the stairs, into the cells below. Looking around him he sees pale, bloodied faces behind the bars, faces he half-recognizes. Frightened eyes swollen half-shut, misshapen gums around missing teeth, arms hugging limbs broken or wrenched or burned.

From the room at the end of the hall, screams; through the half-open door he sees the familiar silhouette of Astrid. He lingers at the door, unable to tear himself away, and he recognizes the woman in the chair; a heretic he himself once had interrogated, and once she'd confessed to her crimes, executed.

Even without him, she is still here. Eodwulf takes his place this time around, Astrid records. They do not seem to notice his absence.

"Nothing's changed," he murmurs.

"And why would it have changed?" Nott's voice comes from behind him. "You were an instrument of the Empire's will, nothing more. They have other instruments. You were but a gear in a machine; take you out, and another one fills your place."

He shakes his head slowly. "Then it really wouldn't make any difference at all, would it?" he says bitterly. "If I'd never been."

"Not to these poor souls, no," Nott agrees. "But to others, you did."

Another shift, the walls rushing and resettling around him, leaving him feeling as though he were moving far too fast although he has not taken a single step. The scene resettles into another too-familiar location, another block of cells, another jail. Years later.

He knows this particular cell as well as he knows his own name; he'd spent weeks staring at the inside of it, counting every crack in the ceiling, tracing every stain on the wall. In the corner, a few crumbled rocks form a little crack in the wall where a very small person can hide, yellow eyes glaring out at the world.

"This is the day I first saw you," he realizes. "This is where we met, you and I."

Shouting behind him; he looks over to see two of the jail wardens -- Hound and Hyena he'd called them, since he'd never found out their real names -- leading a manacled figure down the hallway. This man is a stranger to him, though. He's short but so heavily muscled he almost looks squat, with a shorn head and small, hard, beady eyes. Snake eyes, Caleb thinks. Scars trace around his hands and up his arms, evidence of violence taken and violence given.

"Hey, Rat, we brought you a new cellmate!" Hound calls, just as he had when he'd thrown Caleb into the cell.

"Wanna take bets on which of them guts the other first?" Hyena asks, and he cackles the same as he had that day.

This time, though, when the door slams behind him the new prisoner does not move to his own corner of the cell. This time, when Nott growls warningly at him he moves forward instead, advancing to pin her against the cold stone wall. This time, Nott's low-voiced warning ends in a high-pitched shriek of outrage, and then in a scream of true pain as the stranger slams her crushingly against the wall. Claws flash and teeth bite but she is unarmed, the thug outweighs her by nearly two hundred pounds, and there is nowhere for her to run.

This time, the Hound and Hyena laugh and trade coins as their newest prisoner beats his cellmate to death with his bare hands.

"No!" Caleb cries out, throwing himself forward against the bars of the cell. No one responds to him; no one can hear him. He might as well be a ghost. He rattles the bars in frustration, but they do not budge under his hands.  The Nott-in-the-cell is still screaming and there is nothing he can do, he knows her voice well enough to know when she's really hurting, and there is nothing he can do,  _ nothing. _

He whirls around, facing the shadowy figure. "Why?" he shouts. "Why would anyone do that?!"

"Not everyone in the world is as kind to outsiders as you were, Caleb," the shadowy Nott replies calmly. "Not everyone would befriend a small goblin girl in a prison cell."

The prison darkens, melting away, and the scene changes again. This time he recognizes Trostenwald, the city where it all began, the town where he and the others had their fateful meeting. "Every change makes a ripple, spreading outwards from the point of impact," Nott says. "Things that start small, but each has its own effect on what follows."

The field where the Fletching and Moondrop Carnival of Curiosity took place is in ruins, the tents ripped and debris scattered across the field. The body of a toad-man lies dead, tongue rolled out in the trampled mud, head lying separate from its body. Huddled nearby he sees the familiar forms of his friends: Jester and Fjord, Beau, Molly, and Yasha.

"They still did it," Caleb says, relief lightening his chest. "They still beat the fiend, even without me, or you…"

"They did," Nott agrees. "But not without a cost."

He turns and gasps, flinching back. The trees that line the road bear a grim harvest; bodies hang from the sturdy branches, cords swaying in the wind. He recognizes the faces even in death -- Gustav, Bo the Breaker, Orna, even the twins.

"The fiend killed too many in the town before he was brought down," Nott explains. "The traveling carnival were blamed, as they were the ones who had brought him here. Molly and Yasha were spared since they did their part to fight the fiend -- but with no one to speak on their behalf to the town's Lawmaster, they were sentenced to be hanged for their part in the murders."

The Mighty Nein leave by the main road, far more subdued than they had been the first time -- no one is laughing, no one celebrating. Molly moves like a zombie, the tears coursing down his face the only sign of life, and Yasha's pale face is suffused with murderous rage she can barely contain.

The scene shifts and flows again, this time to the gnoll mines outside Alfield. The Mighty Nein are fighting against the Manticore, but they are clearly struggling. With no lights in this dark cavern Beau is blind, useless to defend herself or her friends. Fjord goes down, paralyzed and helpless; with no one to distract the Manticore, it closes on him and sinks its fangs into his prone form. Fjord's body jerks, blood spraying, and then goes limp in its grasp as it worries him like a bone.

They are overrun; the survivors of the Nein turn to flee. He gets one more glimpse of Alfield, buildings burning as the streets are swarmed by ravening gnolls, before the scene melts into blackness again.

"Strange, isn't it?" Nott asks. "Each man's life touches so many other lives. When he isn't around he leaves an awful hole, doesn't he?"

"No," Caleb whispers, but he can't stop the next vision from flooding in.

The sewers of Zadash. The Xhorhasian spy, breathing his last gasp. The mysterious dodecahedron exchanging hands, Jester passing it off to the Crownsguard, its true nature masked and unknown.

"Small moments like these, potential that slips by unrecognized, can herald the greatest disasters of all," Nott adds.

Another scene, the ground flooding with dark water, drooping grayish trees bracketing the opening of a black cave. Molly, struggling under the assault of three merrows. For a moment Caleb watches him, hoping against hope for another outcome -- if things are different, then surely  _ this _  can be different, surely Molly will make it out this time --

But it's not. Molly goes down, dark blood pumping from the gaping bite wounds in his arms and chest, filling the pools around him with churning blood.

"This isn't right," Caleb whispers.

"Why?" Nott looks up at him, curious. "This is the world you wanted. A world without you."

Look again. Jester and Yasha stolen from the campsite while the others slept. Beau and Keg launch a desperate ambush on the caravan in the road, and again, they falter and fail. With no one to divert Lorenzo's attention from her, the glaive falls and pierces Beauregard's chest, dark red blood flooding the lining of a blue coat.

Look again. Nila, desperate and alone, throws herself in an assault on the Sour Nest; she is overwhelmed and beaten down, thrown in the cages with the rest, and she screams in anguish as her son is torn apart before her eyes to sate Lorenzo's hunger. Shakaste struggles to free himself, to help her, but no rescue is coming; he is struck down on the floor of the cave, skull crushed by a cruel blow, white eyes truly sightless now.

Look again. A tall, pale firbolg in a graveyard overrun to the very doorstep by poison and corruption, sitting quietly with a mug in his hands and staring at nothing at all.

Look again. The Iron Shepherds run rampant over Shady Run Creek, ply their grotesque merchant caravan across all the wild North. Yasha, beaten and caged, gulps for breath like a wounded beast as money changes hands over her head; Lorenzo, his smile all teeth, handing off possession of the wounded aasimar to Trent Ikithon. Jester in the back of the slaver's cart, chained and gagged, alone. Sightless eyes stare at nothing as the caravan rolls north to Xhorhas.

"Stop it!" Caleb shouts, turning his back on the grotesque images.

"It's not up to me to stop it, Caleb," Nott says calmly.

More visions rise up around him, assault him from every side: Ikithon, darkness pouring out of the dodecahedron in his hands, a blank-faced and scar-twisted Yasha standing behind him. The Iron Shepherds, an uncontested reign of terror over the borders of the Empire. To the west, the seas bunch and rise under the command of a red-haired woman, serpent coils swelling the waves around her. To the north, the ground bursting with writhing maggots as a rotting maw opens to swallow the world --

"No more," Caleb demands. Begs. Pleads. He can't look away, there are more and more of them every way he turns.  _ "Stop!" _

It stops.

Slowly the shape of the camp filters back around him. Slowly he turns to look at the person behind him.

Now that he's looking straight at her, not self-centered on the prospect of his own annihilation, he can see the little things that are wrong. From the hood of her cloak he can see her shining eyes and the pale white porcelain of her mask, but nothing else; the rest of her features are shadow. Her body, too, is only a dark suggestion under the shrouding cloak, and there's a white wraith of light that follows her as she moves.

When he looks over to the campfire, pale and colorless in the grayscale world, he can still make out the curled-up form of his goblin friend sleeping in front of the fire.

"You aren't Nott." It's a stupid, obvious thing to say, but his brain feels mired in molasses, thoughts moving at a fraction of their normal pace.

She smiles, and the lips on the porcelain mask  _ move _  with the smile, the painted lips turn and part when she speaks. "No," she agrees. "But her love for you, her wish for you to be saved, was what allowed me to be here tonight."

"Who are you?" he demands. It's probably not wise to make demands of  _ whatever _  fae or demon or goddess has decided to visit him tonight, but he's too shaken for prudence. " _ What _  are you?  Why did you show me all of this?"

"You are more than your past, Caleb Widogast." She moves as though to stand, and in some hard-to-define way she is no longer goblin-sized, although everything about her face and body is still hidden under the cloak. "And your life is an inextricable part of a world where all your friends -- all your loved ones -- can go on living. Remember that when you face -- " she nods towards the dagger still in his hand -- "temptation."

Slowly he opens his grasp, uncurls his fist, and the artifact falls to the ground with a clatter.

She smiles again. "I'd hold onto that, if I were you," she says, gesturing at the knife. "You'll find much better places to plant it than in your own heart."

She turns, and in the blink of an eye she is no longer there. The greyness fades away, draining out of the world as color slowly fills back up in it.

It's dawn. The sun is rising over the horizon, dawnslight flooding the world and pooling silver and gold on the patches where snow has drifted during the night. Jester is stirring and yawning across from him. She sits up with a gasp. "Oh no!" she says. "I can't believe I fell asleep on watch! Caleb, I'm so sorry!"

"It is alright," Caleb murmurs, though his lips are numb and his tongue is heavy. She crawls out from under her bedding and bounces over to him, and despite how long he's known her he's still surprised when she throws her arms around him in a hug.

"I am glad nothing happened when I fell asleep on you!" she exclaims. "I had a weird dream where you weren't there and I was, well, it doesn't matter now. You're here and we're all here and everything's okay!"

The rest of the Nein are beginning to stir in the campsite behind them. He hears the patter of familiar footsteps a second before he's struck around the waist by a fierce goblin hug. "Caleb!" Nott says, and her voice is scratchy from sleep and normal again, no more the strange unearthly chime of last night's visitor. "Caleb are you okay? I had a dream you were  _ gone, _  I  _ hated _  it!"

"I am okay," he chokes out, and he clutches her close to try to fend off the vision of her cornered and beaten bloody in a stone cell, to drown out the sound of her screams in his ears. She wriggles a little in his hold, small and bony and sharp, and she is perfectly right.

"I had odd dreams as well," Caduceus muses quietly as the three of them join the others around the campfire. He's got his pack folded back and the tea set ready, waiting for the fire to heat a pot of water for the morning tea. Yasha is building up the fire, and she says nothing; she's been all too quiet since Molly's death, but at least she's here. She hasn't left them, and maybe that's its own witness as to how much she needs them. All of them.

"Me too. Nothin' I care to remember, that's for sure. Maybe something we ate?" Fjord casts a dubious eye on the rations he's pulling out of their cold storage box.

And Caleb probably could say nothing, he could just let the matter die away here and attribute nothing more to the night's events than some coincidental, less than pleasant dreams.

Instead he sits down in front of the fire, gently disentangles himself from Nott, and takes a deep breath. "I have something to tell you."

Every one of them stops and looks at him, their expressions attentive and concerned. He swallows, then forces himself to continue. "I'm afraid… I was not completely honest before."

" _ That's _ a surprise," Beau mutters, and, well, Caleb supposes he's earned that.

"You didn't fall asleep, Jester." He avoids her eyes as he confesses to that. "I did that. I put you to sleep, so that I would have a chance to be alone, and so that you would not try to stop me."

"Stop you?" Jester looks distressed, but at least she no longer blames herself for something  _ he _  did. "Stop you from what?"

"Just tell us, Caleb," Fjord said, his expression encouraging. He reaches out and puts a hand on Caleb's arm, firm and supportive. "Whatever it is, we can work it out together."

He picks up the knife. Slowly opens his hand towards them with the palm out. "About this," he says. "I lied about this. It is not -- a ritual seax. It is, it is something much worse. I've only ever read about it in some texts, but -- I believe, I think this is the weapon known as the Cipher of Annihilation. If it is used to, to strike a killing blow on a person, then that person does not only die. They are destroyed, body and soul, and everything they ever were is erased from the world."

He looks up to check their reactions. Caduceus looks impressed, Jester shocked, Yasha horrified, Fjord mostly looks confused. "Okay," he says in his slow drawl. "I'm glad you told us, Caleb. But why'd you lie to begin with?"

He lets out a cracked little laugh. "Because I had plans to use it for myself," he says through dry lips.

Beau catches on immediately and flows up from her seat on the ground towards him, hand urgently outstretched to snatch it away from him. She stops as their eyes meet, and oh-so-carefully she moves her arm towards him. "Caleb I think…" She hesitates. "I think maybe I'd better hold onto that for you…"

"It's all right now, Beauregard," he says, and smiles as he lets her take it from him with exquisite care.

The others are beginning to catch on, cued in by Beau's intense reaction. " _ Caleb!" _  Jester exclaims and flings herself on him again, hugging him tightly around the chest. "That's  _ awful! _  You can't mean it, Caleb, not really, right? You wouldn't just, just  _ kill  _  yourself and leave all of us alone without you!"

Nott's grip on him is so tight he's losing blood flow in his leg. He endures it.

"Caleb, I --" Fjord sounds shocked. He comes around to stand next to Caleb, moving his hand to grip his shoulder firmly. "I had no idea you were feelin' so low, I wish you would have told us sooner. I'd like to help, if you'll let us."

Yasha says nothing, just stands and moves over to them, enveloping the three of them in a hug. Caduceus follows suit, folding his long arms around them all. Beau mutters something under her breath and shuffles around to Yasha's side, leaning in to them all in a ridiculous attempt to look casual; her hand finds its way to Caleb's other shoulder.

"Please," Caleb says, and tears are pricking his eyes again. "I would -- I want to let you. Help me, that is."

"I'm so proud of you, Caleb," Nott says from somewhere around his knees, her voice choked with feeling.

"Just tell us what you need," Jester urges him, emphasizing it with a squeeze that threatens to crack his ribs.

He's not cold anymore. He's almost uncomfortably warm in fact, with all of them piling on him like this. He takes a deep breath, then another, until he finally feels the cold block in his throat melt away.

He sits up a little bit and clears his throat. Jester and Yasha slacken their holds a little, not letting go entirely but letting him move a bit. Fjord and Beau maintain their holds on him, and he meets both of their eyes as he looks up. "I will tell you everything," he says, and he begins.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

~end.

**Author's Note:**

> So much thanks to Yettinim, who basically had to bribe me into writing this fic by drawing beautiful, gorgeous art for it. I doubted I could get it done in time for Christmas, but, well, here it is!


End file.
